Saturday 17 January 2009 19.01 EST
First published on Saturday 17 January 2009 19.01 EST

They appear in rags, half-starved and too downtrodden to ask for a second bowl of gruel. In fact, of course, the young paupers who people the workhouse in the hit West End production of Oliver! are well-fed boys and girls from the home counties. Yet it has become clear that some of them might well have cause to ask, as Dickens's original Oliver Twist, did: "Please, sir, can I have some more?"

Although they are an important part of a show that has broken all advance booking records, taking £15m in ticket sales before curtain-up last week, some of the large cast of child actors receive a fee described as "measly" by others in the industry. Some are barely covering their own costs when they appear on stage at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, in the latest revival of the musical to be staged by impresario Sir Cameron Mackintosh.

The ragged workhouse inmates who open the musical with Food, Glorious Food! are believed to be earning less than £20 a night, less than the fee recommended for child performers by Equity, the actors' union.

A number of the young cast picked out for the chorus are brought into London by coach by the production company, Cameron Mackintosh Ltd. Clearly, the offer of free transport, coupled with the chance to star alongside Rowan Atkinson, who plays Fagin, is more than enough to make it worthwhile for the young stars, even before they are paid. The parents of some of the performers, however, are not so thrilled, particularly if they are paying for extra journeys in and out of the West End.

"I am glad we are doing it, because it means a lot and it is a thing that we didn't expect," said the father of one of the boys appearing in the show. "But we are worried how we are going to arrange it. It's not cheap."

Lewis Jenkins, a spokesman for the production company, said pay was confidential but that Mackintosh would not be able to put on a show unless he was meeting the stringent legal requirements. He explained that the children taking part are divided into three grades. "There are those playing Oliver and the Artful Dodger on one grade, and there are three gangs of children on another grade. And then there are 'the coach kids', as we call them, who are in the workhouse scene and have a little less to do."

Martin Brown of Equity pointed out that, as children are not eligible for membership, his union can only make pay recommendations. If both the adult actors and the children in a show are happy with their contracts, a production goes ahead.

"Equity recommends that children are paid half the minimum weekly fee of an adult actor. Actors must earn between £450 and £500 depending on the number of performances," said Brown. Most West End contracts request that performers do not talk publicly about their salary, but children playing named characters in Oliver! are thought to be earning between £35 and £60 a performance, while Atkinson is rumoured to be earning several tens of thousands a week.

Oliver! is a revival of Sam Mendes's 1994 production of the Lionel Bart show, and has a larger cast of young performers this time around. Mackintosh told the Stage that he was keen to see a more crowded stage. "I decided - rather madly - to have 50 children, which is more than twice what we had at the Palladium."

This change, together with the tightening of child licensing laws, means that Mackintosh's company is now employing 150 children in the £4.5m production, including three Artful Dodgers and three Olivers. Previously only two rotating casts were employed. No child may perform more than four times a week and chaperones must be provided.

The new Oliver! has attracted widespread interest since the broadcast of the BBC1 talent show, I'd Do Anything last year. A panel of judges, which included Andrew Lloyd Webber and Denise Van Outen, chose three boys to share the role of Oliver. Jodie Prenger was then chosen by public vote for the lead female role of Nancy.

Sylvia Young, who runs a stage school and has several pupils in Oliver!, said children are never paid much in the theatre. "Obviously I would love them to be better paid: it is nice for them to have something to put in a bank account for later on. But there is nothing that compares with the experience of being on stage."

Child performers in Stephen Daldry's hit West End musical Billy Elliot, who are all more than just "extras", are on a different financial footing, though. A spokeswoman for the show said the children were paid above the Equity minimum. "Working Title and Stephen Daldry had never done a musical before and anyone who had told them, 'It is normally done like this,' would not have been listened to. For us, each of the children playing the key roles were like Judi Dench.

"At the start we said the kids are not going to be paid £20 a night. It is just wrong. We did not want to pay something measly," she added.